A friend recently pointed out to me – more than once – that the title of my blog has potential beyond the title of a blog. Expanding on that theme, I'm stepping out a bit and posting, for your edification, what it's really all about.

My friend Curt is right. "Pedal on regardless" has become my tagline because it means something to me. Yes, I love riding my bike. Witness the posts from last summer after The Accident, and consider that I'm still riding – you do the math! But my beautiful Nellie Belle, the blue Bianchi I bought because I know I'll never be able to afford an Italian sports car, symbolizes more in my mind than a nice ride, a good workout, calories burned, or even great times with friends and family. The time I spend on the back roads of Kentucky, Indiana, New Jersey, and anywhere else we might be are reflections of the times of my life.

I think Nellie Belle and I have picked up a thing or two along the way that may be important. We'd like to share, if you're interested. These thoughts will be posted here for a few days, anyway, until I decide where else they should go.

Pedal on!
:-)

Pedal On Regardless
Manifesto

1. First – regarding hills: What goes down must go back up. Sometimes it’s tough. Deal with it.
2. Second: You can ride alone if you like, but the hills are usually easier to pull if there’s someone to cheer you on.
3. You’re not going to get anywhere if you try to coast all the way, but there’s nothing wrong with coasting sometimes!
4. If you fall off, get back on and keep pedaling. If you’re afraid of looking foolish, you’re clearly not yet a true cyclist.
5. If you let the fear of getting hurt stop you, you’ll never get out of the driveway. (Want to see my scars?) Trust me, it’s worth the risk.
6. You won’t get lost. You might get momentarily misplaced. Think of it as an inadvertent side trip and enjoy yourself – you’ll find your way home after a while.
7. If you can’t go as far as you wanted today, add a couple miles tomorrow.
8. Never head out without a little cash and a fully charged cell phone.
9. Life happens. Circumstances happen. You choose the perspective.
10. The point is, keep going. You can do it!

Thanksgiving

After a while, four-day weekends start to feel kind of like the fifth or sixth really good downhill run on a long bike ride: it finally dawns on you that what goes down must go back up, and you stop saying "woo-hoo!" and start focusing on gathering steam for what comes after. It's not a bad thing, just not the wild, unfettered jubilation it started out to be.

I mean, hills are good. They're where you feel the strength you've gained since the last ride. They're where you push and test yourself, where you build more strength still, where you feel it surging up through your calves and thighs and lungs even as you wonder whether you'll make it to the top. They're where you learn your limits, and where you learn to bull your way past those limits. There aren't many things as potent as cresting a hill that scared the crap out of you when you saw it coming, and realizing that you did it, and you never once had to get off and push the bike.

Which is a similar feeling to that which comes on the second day back at work, when you get tossed a project that's big, requires a total rewrite -- with imagination thrown in, because the business owner doesn't even like the format as it exists -- and has a two-day turnaround request attached. It takes two hours to beat it into a form that's workable. The Word file is uneditable because it's in a fragmented table format that refuses to be converted to text; the PDF has to be exported and sorted out first. By the end of the day, it's starting to make sense, but now you've got to figure out what to do with it.

I love what I do -- translating "corporate-speak" into real, everyday language so our customers can understand it. Much of it's legalese, and almost all of it's obscure and jargony, and I take pleasure in wrestling half-page paragraphs down to a few concise sentences that actually make sense.

But Wednesday, I had other things to do. I'd ridden the bike to work, and I was grateful to have the only director to show up in our department declare the holiday to officially start at 1 p.m. instead of 5. It gave me time to ride home by way of Spring Street (Clifton Community Garden at left), Frankfort Avenue (the Wine Cellar), Shelbyville Road (Breadworks), and Evergreen (Anchorage -- big hills and bigger money). By the time I arrived at the house, my panniers were loaded with two bottles of wine, two large loaves of bread, and of course, my shoes and dress clothes from the office. We stopped at Paul's Vegetable and Fruit Market on the way back to church.

Thursday, I shared the kitchen with my daughter. In summer, we share space in the garden -- in winter, it's the kitchen. We work around each other very well, and when called for, we collaborate effectively. Mostly, though, she has her areas of expertise and I have mine and we negotiate timetables. Briony bakes, I do sides, Ed smokes the turkey on the grill (a charcoal kettle grill that's about three feet tall, 18 inches in diameter, and has more versatility than you could ever imagine). Bri mixes, I wipe counters, Ed brings the turkey in after two hours to finish up in the oven. I chop, Bri rinses mixing bowls and implements to use again for the next project, and Ed goes to watch a football game.

Eventually, my daughter always saves the day, because eventually -- inevitably -- I sustain some kind of inadvertent injury and have to take a break. This year, it was the finger that found itself under the knife blade as said knife was slicing through the whole-grain cranberry loaf that went in the stuffing. Not sure how it happens, but I always manage to NOT bleed in the food. But bleed I did...

Bri's fiance, Rob, helped me with bandaids. We got four on the cut, and it immediately soaked through and started dripping blood onto the floor. I held a paper towel over the cut, tightly, but every time I let go, it started running down my hand again. We put on four more bandaids, tighter. It dripped. They were talking stitches, I was arguing that it would be ridiculous to go to the ER for a cut finger on Thanksgiving Day. The cut was a whole quarter of an inch long, on the side of my finger between the nail and the pad. You wouldn't think that much blood could come out of such a teensy slice.

Finally, Ed called the urgent care clinic at my request. I agreed I'd go there if they were open. They weren't, so Rob wrapped the finger in several layers of gauze and tape. It soaked through pretty quickly, but it didn't drip. I sat down for a few minutes to catch my breath and manufacture a few replacement red cells, Bri finished constructing the stuffing, and life went on.

The turkey was perfect. Early in the day, we'd had Lynne Rosetto Kasper on the radio with her Thanksgiving Day "Turkey Confidential," and she'd inspired me to try something I hadn't done before. I'd loosened the skin from the bird's chest and thighs and rubbed butter and seasonings densely under the skin -- parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. A Scarborough Faire turkey. More butter and seasonings in the chest cavity, two hours on the grill, two more in the oven, and I don't think we've ever had a more perfect turkey. It was juicy, tender, and actually even easy to carve, a task that's always been a challenge for us.

The key ingredients in the stuffing were Andouille sausage and the cranberry bread -- rich, dark, and spicy. Bri made spicy sweet potatoes, I made Brussels sprouts in cream. (I was the only one to eat any of them, but the rest went into a vegetable chowder last night, and it seems to be something of a hit, at least!) I'd found a recipe for cranberry-citrus chutney, but forgot to get the lemon and orange it called for. Fortunately, I still had half a box of clementines, three of which went in the chutney. It was probably sweeter than it was supposed to be, but still lovely. There was a savory pasta salad that had been marinating in the fridge for two days -- the perfect amount of time for something like that to gather flavor -- and apple pie and ice cream for dessert.

The best part of the meal came when I asked for an opinion on the stuffing (the recipe called for cornbread, and I'd just decided on impulse to substitute the cranberry bread). There was praise for the modification, and then Rob said, "It's all good. I mean, you remembered to put the sugar in the cranberries this year!" Bri started giggling and said, "Yeah, and the pies are actually cooked!" They were recalling Thanksgiving three or four years ago, when they'd only just begun dating, when I had indeed missed putting the sugar in the cranberry chutney, so it had "pucker power" that couldn't be beat. And Bri had pulled some diced pumpkin out of the freezer and made pies, only to discover the pumpkin had been put up raw -- when the pies came out of the oven, the pumpkin was still frozen in spots.

I think it was last Christmas -- or maybe it was Easter -- the kids were suggesting we pack the rolls up and send 'em to the Marines. The yeast hadn't done its job, the dough hadn't risen, and the rolls were basically the consistency of artillery shells. This holiday, the rolls didn't come until Friday morning -- I didn't start them early enough, and they didn't have time for their second rising -- and they weren't a whole lot better, although you could at least bite into them without risk of breaking a tooth. Eventually -- someday -- I will locate that good recipe I used to have, and we will have rolls again. Until then, I think I'll stick to my fallback position, which is a third stop on the way home, at Plehn's Bakery in St. Matthews. It's right on my way, just a couple miles east of the Wine Cellar, on the bus route to Middletown in case the bike and I decide to ride, and they have rolls that can't be beat!

Friday, the kids were off to work and Ed and I sat around and digested, for the most part. Saturday, I actually got out for a ride with the Louisville Bike Club, from Waterfront Park to Shawnee Park and back. I only rode as far as Shawnee Golf Course -- a couple miles shy of the round trip -- but between that and the ride home, I put in 30 miles altogether. Unfortunately, I left my fleece headband at home. The damp chill and the wind settled in my left ear, and it's been aching ever since.

But it was a wonderful weekend. I've felt rested and glad to be at work this week, and I'm thankful. As I said at church Wednesday night, when the mic came around to me, I'm thankful for music, for laughter, for my garden, and for people to share them with.

And, I might add now, for my bike, my kitchen, my family, and Lynne Rosetto Kasper. For Andouille and for cranberry bread. For brussels sprouts, heavy cream, and clementines. And for sweet potatoes, apple pie, and Breyer's ice cream.

For every good gift and every perfect gift, thanks be to God.

Navigating

Hit Cherokee Park this evening for the first time since back in the early summer. I'd made a round of Seneca Park (they're adjacent) a few weeks ago, but coming home from work tonight, I decided to go for broke.

Cherokee Park has some hills that are - at least to a relative novice like me - somewhat challenging. In fact, the last time I attempted them, they were seriously challenging. In fact... when I rode part of the loop from Seneca the other week, they were still pretty serious. And being under three weeks out from the big 3-day ride, I need serious hills.

So yes, they were still serious tonight. But you know what? I have now done that Maryhurst hill twice. The second time, I didn't even have to shift all the way down. I made the top in 1:4. I rode home that night the long way, up the long hill on Dorsey Lane, through Owl Creek, up Wade to Evergreen, and up that long hill back to LaGrange Road, and I only stopped twice. And had a drink of water and then rode from where I was to the top of the hill.

This evening, I had my route mapped out, but I hadn't visually memorized it. I made it up Baxter to Cherokee, but I missed Alexander somewhere and ended up wandering happily around Cherokee Triangle for some time. Cherokee Triangle is a lovely old neighborhood full of "Aunt Tot" houses - I know, if you're not related on my dad's side, you won't get that, but if you are, you know exactly what I mean! Well-maintained homes, at least 3,000 square feet each, original Mission style or maybe "pseudo-Tudor" from the same general period, with well-tended, gracious lawns and lots of space between houses. After a while, though, I began to notice that it wasn't getting earlier, and that I wasn't entirely sure where I needed to go from where I was. Sadly, I'd ridden those same streets, many of them, a few weeks ago when I branched out from Seneca Park, but in spite of those fairly frequent flashes of "oh, yeah!" I wasn't quite sure how they fit together anymore.

But then I rounded another curve and - oh, yeah! - there was Scenic Loop, which meant that I was officially In The Park. And I rode.

It's roughly five miles from the office to where I realized I was where I wanted to be, except that I'd probably put in an extra three or four exploring the neighborhood. What I'd mapped was a whole lot of Cherokee Parkway and Pee Wee Reese Road, not so much Scenic Loop. I took a wrong turn a couple of times and had to double back, and there were moments when - even when I knew I was in the park - I wasn't sure where in the park. But the really bitchin' hills, I remembered. They were the ones that almost did me in back in June.

Today, I made it to the fountain without ever once getting off to push. I stopped twice halfway or more up a hill and had a long drink of water, then knocked my gears back to where they felt right and took off again. I stopped when my front fender, which had come unhitched on the left, started dragging badly on the right against the tire. Another thing about commuting regularly and paying attention to how your gears feel is that you also learn how your tires should feel - and my front tire was feeling really sluggish. So I stopped at the fountain, checked my 20 with a lovely woman out for a walk, and called my daughter.

To shorten the long story:

• Nellie Belle is off to the shop again tomorrow, to fix the fender and check the tire and assess her actual, realistic road-worthiness for a three-day ride.
• If it turns out Nellie Belle is not up to the three-day ride, Plan B is to retrofit Bri's bike - Betty - with the appropriate gears, handlebars, and road wheels and start learning how Betty should feel going uphill.
• I guess I'm driving tomorrow after all.
• I now have yet another route home from work.

And I'm hanging in there. My navigation skills are still a bit suspect, but I'm getting a lot better at hills. Beginning with my "driving in Louisville" philosophy - there's always another way to get there - I'm learning my way around some places I'd never see in a car.

I've lived a lot of places. I've loved several of them. I don't think I've known one this well since San Jose - because this is the first time since then that I've navigated on the ground, through the neighborhoods, up and down the streets, learning my city at eye level. Navigating in a car, you watch for traffic, for lights, for street signs. Navigating on a bike, you watch for traffic, for street signs, and for friendly-looking people. For landmarks. For "oh, yeah!" moments.

I'm working on Daddy's trick of knowing what direction he was going depending on the angle of the sun. (The season is slowing me down a bit - the angle seems to have shifted somewhat abruptly a couple of days ago.) In the meantime, I'm learning the hills, and I'm learning Louisville better than anywhere I've lived in over 30 years.

Pedaling

It took me a while to get the hang of the gears.

My first bike was a Catalina cruiser, teal green with rainbows on the fenders. I was ten years old when I got it, and I'd wanted one for years - my brother was six, and he got his first bike the same Christmas. That did not please me, but the rainbow fenders made up for it, mostly. Not that the sibling rivalry disappeared, then or ever. And not that that's a problem...

In the 70s, I had a 10-speed, which I never did figure out. I finally set it in the gear that felt most like the cruiser and left it there. Rode it for quite some time - took it to California with me, and rode it to my doctor's appointments in San Jose when I was pregnant, up through the 7th month. Stopped when someone stole it out of the bushes one night while we were in the movie theater.

Rode for a little bit 10-15 years ago, in eastern North Carolina. Had a couple of close calls with good old boys - in combination with trucks and beer, I believe - and one nearly-nasty incident with a couple of really bad dogs, the kind that don't bark. You know, the ones you realize are about to attack when you feel their breath on your ankles. After that, my range started shrinking, and I quickly gave up riding the Carolina back roads.

Thanks to a friend who's been commuting on his bike for several years, I started riding again two years ago, and fell back in love with the speed, the motion - the freedom. This year, I kicked off the season with the American Diabetes Association's Tour de Cure in May, and I haven't looked back. I did 14 miles on the Tour before I had a flat that wouldn't hold air any more. I'm now up close to 30 miles at a stretch, and I'll be at 60 by October, when my brother (remember him?) and I do a three-day ride from Carrollton, KY to the general vicinity of Bowling Green, near the Tennessee border. I was thinking about it, until he said, "If you'll do it, I will." That's where old sibling rivalry becomes a good thing: when your kid brother offers to drive from the D.C. suburbs to Louisville, Kentucky, if it will get you off your ass and get you moving.

Pedaling I could do. But shifting was a bit beyond me until about mid-summer. My friend Kirk, the bike commuter, noted during the Tour de Cure that I wasn't using my gears "efficiently." He kept telling me I should be using the higher gears to build up to hills, and I'm thinking, "Yeah, sure, and then what?" He told me that day to work with them, learn the feel of each gear, and after a while, I wouldn't have to think about it.

By July, I knew, at least in theory, that it was kind of like that Volkswagen Beetle I learned to drive in 1970: You start out in first gear, or you don't get going. You shift to the middle gears for cruising. And the high gears are for going downhill without burning out your brakes.

July 7, I got a heavy-duty lesson in first gear: I tried to start off going uphill on an unfamiliar rural road in New Jersey (yes, they have rural roads in New Jersey, and they're beautiful!) in too high a gear - around 6 on the second derailleur - and my foot slipped off the pedal. Three days later, we figured out it was the metal brace - actually a heavy-gauge wire - holding the fender to the axle that caught my shin and ripped it from about midway above the ankle almost to my knee, and nearly to the bone. What I learned there, in the order of learning:

• The inside of the human leg is not attractive in the least.
• It is possible to get a very nasty injury on a bike and never hit the ground, or anything else, as far as one can tell.
• New Jersey emergency service personnel are absolutely the bestest!
• I get talkative and even witty when I'm in shock. (There's now a whole dark comedy routine surrounding the incident. I drag it out at parties and meetings when I'm wearing a short dress and my scar shows.)
  
• Those metal braces that hold the fenders to the axles are supposed to have rubber caps, and you should always check them when you do your ABC Quick Check.*
• And when starting off going uphill, the best gear is first derailleur, somewhere in the neighborhood of no higher than 2 or 3. Your foot may spin, but it won't slip, you won't wobble, and the worst that will happen is that you'll have to stop, shift up a notch, and go again.

It took me a week to get back on the bike after that. We came home to Kentucky and the doctor who checked my stitches - 21, in case anyone wants to know - said I could ride again any time I felt like it, but I was scared. I didn't realize how scared for a few more days, when the shock finally wore off and I lost it completely. Then I nearly panicked. Here I'd finally found I was good at something physical - me, the girl who was not only picked last for teams, but over whom there were arguments about who had to take her - and I loved it, but I was afraid to do it again.

I told Ed - told him how scared I was, how scared I'd been, how I'd stood on the side of that road, holding the edges of my laid-open leg together, and I'd thought, "I could die out here. I could bleed to death on this day, in this park beside this road in New Jersey." And God bless him, as nervous as I know it makes him for me to be out there riding around in traffic (even with a helmet), he said, "Well, then, you have to get back on."

After that, I started getting it very quickly. I had a couple of "instructional moments" with Kirk and - second-hand - with a guy who works with Ed, who I've never met but who does a lot of distance riding, and I started taking off in lower gears and paying attention to how they felt, and it didn't take long at all.

When you're pedaling, you hit a point where it feels easy. Not just good, but almost too easy. The pedals are going fast, and you're flying along - but you're not moving any faster. You learn where that point is, and then you learn to shift up just before you get there. That's the magic: It isn't supposed to be hard most of the time, but it's not supposed to be coasting all the way.

You learn the sensation - the tension in your calves, the mild pressure in your thighs and hamstrings, nothing difficult, but definitely there. If it's missing, you're giving up power. When you get that push going, it's easier to throw yourself behind a hill - and when you hit a bitch of a hill, it's not impossible anymore. Then you shift down, and you can keep going.

This evening, after four days down with mild flu-like symptoms, I came home from my second day back at work - rode in with Ed this morning - and got the bike out of the shed. It's Wednesday, which is the day I take my crochet bag over to Maryhurst and spend an hour with the teenage girls who live there. Maryhurst is at the top of a hill that's at the top of another hill, and I'd never tackled either of those hills before. And they're both bitches.

I remember thinking back in the spring that I might never be able to ride all the way up the Maryhurst hill. This evening, I had to slow down as I made the corner into the drive, so I lost some push there, but I was nearly halfway up before I had to shift from the second derailleur to the first, and I made it to the top. I was in 1:1 mode, but by God, I did it. Okay, we did it - I was praying Anne Lamott's favorite prayer, "Help me, help me, thank you, thank you," from right after I shifted the first time, all the way up - but a few feet from the crest, I took a quick break from prayer to say, "Woo-hoo! HAH!"

There's a three-day ride waiting for me in October. Little Brother has already said he's in it for the ride, not the competition, which is okay by me. The second day is about 90 miles, and I can see it taking me 10 hours easily. And I may have to push Nellie Belle up some of those mid-Kentucky hills.

But not until I've hit 1:1 and she won't go any more. Because I can pedal, and I get it. I feel the gears now, and I know how to work them. And it can only get better from here.

Pedal on!


*ABC Quick Check:

• A - air: Check your tires - preferably with a gauge
• B - brakes: When you hold your brake handle and push the bike against it, does the other wheel come off the ground? It should.
  
• C - chain and crank: Are your pedals stable? Do they wobble on the crank? (Not good.) Is your chain lubricated and looking good? AND - as of July 7, 2009 - CAPS: Are those little rubber cap thingies on your axle braces where they're supposed to be? And if not, is SOMETHING covering the ends of those heavy-gauge wires? A serious layer of electrical tape will do - just make sure they're covered!
• Quick - quick release levers: They hold the wheels and often the seat, handlebars, and various other parts onto modern bikes. Make sure they're (a) down tight and (b) facing in a direction where they won't catch your clothing or anything else and throw you.
• Check: Take a spin in a circle around the parking lot or cul-de-sac and see if you feel something you might've missed in your visual check.